A Second Suspect Arrested in Connection with the Massive Comelec Breach

Philippines' law enforcement officials recently arrested another person suspected to have been involved in the hack as well as defacement of Comelec, the Commission of Elections of the nation which reportedly leaked 55m voter details. Comelec's chairperson Andres Bautista said on April 29 during one press conference that the suspect was Joenel De Asis a man aged 23 who was Anonymous Philippines' another ringleader, the group that reportedly planned out portion of the assault, March 27, 2016.

The arrest of De Asis occurred at his residence situated inside Muntinlupa City. NBI (National Bureau of Investigation) sent its officers for the purpose. According to systems integrator, De Asis wished to highlight the shortfalls in security within the Comelec portal, reported the Manila Bulletin.

Understandably, De Asis hacked into the website followed with stealing 340GB sized database 5 days prior to defacement of the website by Anonymous hacktivists, however, doesn't admit uploading it onto WeHaveYourData.com.

An SI worker for certain Muntinlupa-situated semiconductor company, De Asis acknowledged he was a member of LulzSec Philippines. Infosecurity-magazine.com posted this, April 26, 2016.

De Asis has been found accountable for invading Comelec's confidential database followed with downloading as well as leaking the details via one fake Facebook account.

Whilst De Asis and Biteng the dual suspects got together for infiltrating the Comelec site, as per an assertion by them, they didn't plan to compromise the system. Actually, Biteng had discovered one weak security area which helped them gain admission into the data.

According to De Asis, they didn't intend to sell the data as was thought they did to interested personalities/political party. They just wished to prove hacking the Comelec was easy.

Moreover, De Asis asserts that election in the country won't be affected due to the majestic data-hack, since Comelec's servers aren't the same which are linked with Vote Counting Machines.

Paul Biteng is the first person arrested in connection with the Comelec hack. He's a Manila-based security investigator and a member of Anonymous. Both he and De Asis face trial within the purview of Cybercrime Prevention Act.

Police are now searching the third individual involved within the cyber-assault.

» SPAMfighter News - 5/5/2016